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The A to Z of American politics

Date

October 20, 2012

(29)

Tom Threkhold

In the first two weeks of November, the United States and China will choose their next leaders. Today The Saturday Age begins its in-depth coverage of these historic transitions. Nick O'Malley and Tom Threkhold provide a guide to the greatest political show on earth, the US presidential election.

The biggest individual political donor in US history, Sheldon Adelson, 79, is the casino magnate who has donated $70 million to the Republicans so far. He has pledged to spend $100 million or ''whatever it takes'' to defeat Obama. Adelson is anti-union and pro-Israel. See Citizens United.

BAIN

Bain Capital is the private equity firm Mitt Romney founded and ran in the 1980s and 1990s, and the source of his estimated $250 million fortune. Newt Gingrich first attacked Bain for slashing jobs for profit during the GOP primaries. Romney survived the claim that he was a ''predator capitalist'', but the assault legitimised the issue for use by Obama. Democrats run countless ads portraying Romney as a heartless corporate raider who made his wealth by firing workers and shipping jobs to China.

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CITIZENS UNITED is a conservative political group that wanted to pay to air a documentary criticising Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, but was prevented by regulations on how private groups could spend money in elections. The group challenged on freedom of speech grounds, and the case eventually found its way to a sympathetic conservative Supreme Court, where it became one of a series of cases that scrapped most restrictions on political spending. The basic thinking went like this: speech is good for democracy, spending money on political campaigning is a form of speech, more spending equals more speech equals more democracy. Of course, critics have pointed out that it also means people with more money get more democracy, too. Citizens United gave rise to ''PACs'' - Political Action Committees - groups that banded together to support or attack candidates. There were no limits on the amount they could gather and spend.

DOUBLE DOWN

The blackjack term that has become the most irritating and over-used of the American political lexicon. In a new ad attacking Romney for advocating increased tax cuts, Obama says: ''In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.'' Political commentators are addicted to it too. If the migration of ''working families'' is any guide, expect to be assaulted by Australian politicians accusing one another of doubling down on bad policy for years to come.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Presidents are not elected by the people, but by the Electoral College, a group of 539 ''electors'' allocated to the states. When a party wins the popular vote in a state, it actually wins the number of votes that state has in the college. To win the White House, a candidate must then secure 270 votes in the Electoral College. Electoral College votes are allocated to the states according to population. Each state receives one vote for each seat it has in the House of Representatives, plus one each for its two senators.

Therefore, the smallest states have three votes in the Electoral College [one member in the House of Representatives and two senators] and the biggest, California, has 55 votes in the Electoral College.

This also explains why such states as Ohio are always so important in selecting the president. California might have the most Electoral College votes, but it is a safe Democratic state. Ohio is a swing state with 20 crucial Electoral College votes. It is possible, but rare, for a candidate to win a majority of votes in the Electoral College - and thus the presidency - without winning the majority of the popular vote. The last time this happened was 12 years ago in the disputed election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

FISCAL CLIFF

The fiscal cliff is a treat awaiting the winner in much the same way the financial crisis was waiting for Obama in 2008. Because the deadlocked Congress could not reach a budget deal last year, it instead agreed to a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts (now known as the fiscal cliff) to kick in to save $1.2 trillion over the next decade should they not arrive at a deal by the end of the 2012. The Bush tax cuts and the Obama payroll tax holiday will evaporate; defence spending will be slashed. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that if this all goes into effect, the economy will contract by an annualised 2.9 per cent in the first half of 2013.

GROVER NORQUIST

Grover Norquist is the man many hold responsible for preventing moderate Republicans from coming to a budget deal with the Obama Administration. Norquist is the founder of Americans for Tax Reform and the creator of the ''Taxpayer Protection Pledge'', which was signed by 95 per cent of all Republican congressmen and all but one of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates. Signatories pledge never to raise any tax under any circumstance.

HEALTHCARE

Obama's first term will be defined by his attempt at healthcare reform, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [''Obamacare''] of 2010. America's healthcare system - one of the most expensive and inefficient in the industrial world - is the primary source of the country's high deficits and national debt. Plans to reform it had kicked around for 50 years before President Obama took on the cause.

Obamacare is hated by Republicans (though the mandate is based on laws passed by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts) and remains broadly unpopular. The US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the mandate in June. Under a re-elected Obama presidency it will be entrenched, under Romney it would be repealed.

IMMIGRATION

Immigration, particularly the movement of large numbers of Mexicans into the United States over the past four decades, has reshaped US politics. To hold conservative border-states, Republicans took ever more harsh stances against illegal immigrants, alienating the growing Hispanic voting population, but entrenching the party's support among working-class whites. Democrats have courted the Hispanic vote by calling for laws to help immigrants in the country illegally to obtain legal status and, one day, become citizens.

The DREAM Act, legislation intended to help the children of illegal immigrants become US citizens if they obtain higher education or serve in the military, is widely supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.

JOSE GODINEZ-SAMPERIO, a young law graduate found himself at the centre of national politics when he applied to the Florida bar. Jose came to America with his parents at nine, never had documents, but passed from primary school through to law school topping his classes all the way. He has asked the state's Supreme Court to allow him to practise, and is a vocal member of a growing activist group whose slogan ''Undocumented Unafraid Unashamed'' has changed US politics. See Immigration.

KEYSTONE

The Keystone XL pipeline, an extension to an existing line that would move crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas, has become emblematic of the energy debate in this election. Romney accuses Obama of rejecting a planned extension because he was in thrall to environmentalists. In fact, many of those objecting were Republican-voting ranchers along the route. Romney would allow the pipeline to be built, but both parties enthusiastically support American independence from foreign energy sources.

LIBYA

Polls show most Americans trust President Obama to manage America's national security, in particular because of the killing of Osama bin Laden and many other senior al-Qaeda figures by US Special Forces and drones. A September attack by Islamic radicals on a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed the lives of four diplomats has opened the President up to criticism from Republicans, who allege the administration let security at American diplomatic outposts slacken and refused to acknowledge that the murders were a terrorist attack.

MIDDLE CLASS

The only class that matters in this election is the middle class. The poor are absent and the stinking rich only exist when Obama is discussing Romney.

NATE SILVER has become one of the most significant figures in American punditry, using the near-unique strategy of mostly being right. Silver - a sort of cross between Antony Green, Doogie Howser and Nostradamus - picked 49 of 50 states in the last election. His blog, FiveThirtyEight, is now published by The New York Times.

OCTOBER SURPRISE

An event that takes place very late in the election season and has the potential to change the game. The term came into widespread use after 1972, when the then national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, announced that ''we believe peace is at hand'' in Vietnam, 12 days before the presidential election. Now discussed almost daily.

POLLING

There are hundreds of national and state polls, tracking how President Obama and Mitt Romney are doing nationally and in each battleground state. Pollsters have come under criticism this election season, mostly from conservatives, for giving too much weight to pro-Obama voting groups and thus ''skewing'' the polls against the Republican Romney. These attacks have died down since many of

those same polls show Romney gaining on Obama or actually in the lead.

QUANTITATIVE EASING

Quantitative easing is the main stimulus tool the US Federal Reserve uses to kick some life into the listless American economy. The central bank injects a pre-determined sum of money into the economy by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private financial institutions. The last round, popularly known as QE3, was on September 13, this year proved controversial, after the Romney campaign attacked it as ''sugar high economics''.

Seamus was the Romneys' Irish setter that the candidate strapped in a cage onto the roof of the car during the 12-hour drive from Massachusetts to Ontario during the Romneys' 1983 family holiday. The incident has led to the founding of Dogs Against Romney, a lobby group and associated super-PAC (yes, see Citizens United) whose slogan, ''I Ride Inside'', is one of best of the 2012 campaign.

TEA PARTY

The Tea Party movement was born early in 2009 in reaction to Obama's use of the federal government and its spending power to lift the economy out of the Great Recession. Although originally conceived as a libertarian grassroots movement focusing on economic issues, many Tea Party groups are, in fact, funded by prominent figures on the right, and polls show the average Tea Party supporter is very conservative on social issues and backs the use of government power to restrict gay marriage and abortion. Tea Party groups seized control of many state Republican parties and successfully pressured Republicans in Congress and presidential candidates to move to the right and oppose any compromise with President Obama.

UNEMPLOYMENT

America's stubbornly high unemployment is the central complaint against the Obama administration. On October 5, Bureau of Labor statistics announced that the official unemployment rate had dropped from 8.1 per cent to 7.8 per cent, the same level it was when President Obama took office. True, but as the President keeps telling anyone who will listen, at that time the economy was shedding 700,000 jobs a month, and since then it has created 5 million jobs. One of the main causes of frustration for Republicans throughout the campaign has been the comparative buoyancy of Obama's polls despite the unemployment rate. No president in a generation had won a second term with so many out of work, but equally, none has lost when the trend over the two years leading up to the election has been consistently down.

VOTER ID

Groups allied with the Republican Party allege widespread voter fraud, mainly by ethnic minorities, in favour of Democratic candidates, though no examples of such fraud have ever been produced. Nevertheless, Republicans have enacted or tried to enact laws at the state level to force voters to show various forms of identification before being allowed to vote - forms that ethnic minorities are less likely to have than white voters.

WAR ON WOMEN

The gender gap in American politics has existed for decades, with men favouring Republicans and women favouring Democrats. Democrats have tried to harness this trend by arguing that Republicans, particularly evangelical Christians of the right, have been waging a ''War on Women''.

Republicans at state and federal level who have supported laws restricting access to abortion and contraception while opposing equal pay guarantees have given them ammunition.

Republicans in Virginia tried to pass a law that would force women to undergo a medically unnecessary transvaginal probe before seeking an abortion, and a Republican Senate candidate in Missouri alleged women could not become pregnant when ''legitimately raped''.

XYZ

INGERS

Part of the preparation for a presidential debate is to equip the contender with what staff and media call "zingers" - memorable lines that will linger in the days after the encounter. Romney dominated Obama in the first debate this year, but Obama landed the best zinger in the second when he said: ''You know, I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours, so it doesn't take as long."